General activities have become increasingly dependent on electronic devices, such as computers and smart phones. Such devices have embedded computers to control the functioning of the electronic device. These computers often utilize touch-sensitive screens to input and output information.
A touch-sensitive screen is a display device through which a computer can, in addition to displaying information, receive information by sensing a user's touch on the touch-sensitive screen. The computer generally displays various objects, such as icons or text, on the touch-sensitive screen. These objects typically represent the capabilities, information stored in it and commands that can be performed by the electronic device. For example, an icon representing a book may represent the command to start streaming an audio file.
Because a user needs to see a conventional touch-sensitive screen to use it, conventional touch-sensitive screens on electronic devices make the devices virtually inaccessible for visually impaired users. A touch-sensitive screen displays text, which a visually impaired user may not be able to read. In addition, the flat touch-sensitive screen has no physically raised buttons for a visually impaired user to feel. Instead, touch-sensitive screens utilize a graphical symbol to represent a button, so a visually impaired user may not be able to find buttons on a touch-sensitive screen. Also, many touch-sensitive screens display text and graphical symbols in low contrast relative to the background color of the touch-sensitive screen which makes the use of a touch-sensitive screen challenging even to users who do have limited sight i.e. are not totally blind. Moreover, different devices typically display text, icons and controls at different locations on their touch-sensitive screens. For instance, one device may place buttons at the top of the touch-sensitive screen and another may place them at the right side of the touch-sensitive screen. Because of the number and variety of these differences, it is not easy for a user who is visually impaired to memorize these differences and thus use these devices. In addition, a single-touch sensitive screen typically displays different text and graphical symbols depending on context, which makes it difficult for a user who is visually impaired to memorize the differences even on a single touch-sensitive screen.
The community of visually impaired users is large, including users who may have limited vision as well as users who have lost all vision. Because of widespread use of touch-sensitive screens on electronic devices in daily life, visually impaired users are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively use such devices.
Published US Patent Application US 2010/0083329 to Raman et al describes a user interface in which telephone keys are associated with a direction which is input relative to a location of user contact.
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